A Traveller in Time (4 page)

I ran after my aunt who was disappearing in our bedroom. There we tossed and turned the feather-beds and Aunt seized them and puffed and pommelled them till they were soft as down. We drew the linen sheets over them and tucked in the blankets, and Aunt Tissie talked in a low murmur like the brook outside the gate.

“There's plenty of walks round here, over the hills and in the dales, and there's lots of work, what with one thing and another, butter-making, cheese-making, calf and pig feeding, and the poultry yard. You can help me a bit as your mother suggested, and then go off on your own devices. There's maybe more here to please you than you thought on.”

She chuckled quietly and we looked at her rosy crinkled face all puckered with mirth, and wondered what she meant.

“You'll find out in tuthree days. My Betty is coming,” said she nodding and laughing as if she had made a great joke. Betty was three years old, she added, and she laughed again at our discomfiture.

From room to room we went, and some doors were padlocked and some opened on to stores of wizened apples and great round cheeses ripening on the floors. One door which my aunt threw open led to the best bedroom, where a great four-poster bed stood with richly carved posts and ancient hangings and heavy tasselled coverlet. By its side stood a small oak chest, unpolished, and a clumsy chair with a faded velvet cushion.

“This is where they had their bedroom. It's the only one left as it was in their day,” she said.

“Who? Who had this bedroom?” we asked, sniffing the air, and stepping softly into the room. I caught my breath, as I listened for her reply and once again I heard that echoing sigh “for ever and ever”.

“The people who lived here once, those who owned the house a long time ago. Great folk they were, name of Babington. Maybe you've heard of them. The house and farm were theirs, but it has changed since then, and the farm divided.”

“When did they live here?” asked Alison, casually, and she fingered the silky stuffs of the bed curtains.

“Oh, many a year ago. Hundreds maybe. This farm and all the buildings and barns were theirs, and the church hard by the stackyard yonder was their family chapel. They were Papists and folk say—”

We were interrupted by a loud banging on the stairs and the bronze bell in the hall tinkled angrily as somebody shook it to and fro.

“Cicely Anne! Cicely Anne! Where be ye? Are ye staying up there all forenoon? Cicely Anne?”

Uncle Barnabas was roaring like a bull and Aunt Tissie shut the door and hurried downstairs.

“Corves to feed and all to do, and you enjoying yourself upstairs,” cried Uncle Barnabas reproachfully. “Those childer had best come and help, not hinder.”

We went into the calf-place with Aunt and helped her to suckle the little red and white calves, and we held the cans of milk warm from their mothers to their slobbering mouths. We stroked their curly heads and pressed their tiny horns, and I slipped my fingers in their mouths to feel their young teeth.

“Don't be afeard! Put your fingers in. They won't hurt ye,” said Aunt Tissie, as we played with the pretty beasts.

All morning we worked, feeding the hens, running errands to the barns, stirring the pig food, and turning the handle of the turnip-chopper. Ian was out in the fields with Jess, helping to cart and spread manure, which was the healthiest job of all so Uncle Barnabas said.

In the afternoon Aunt took us to visit a neighbour at a farm near, and it wasn't till evening came that I thought of the best bedchamber. We sat round the fire and the newly risen wind cried in the wide chimney and moaned round the corners of the old house. Cows moved clumsily in the cow-places down the yard, thumping their horns against the oak stalls, and we could hear them when the door opened. There was the sturdy tramp of Jess across the cobbles and the clatter of horses led to the stables.

“You must come and see London, and stay with us,” Alison invited my uncle.

“Nay. We can never get away with the corves to suckle and cows to be milked, and London's a powerful way off,” said Uncle Barnabas, in his slow drawl. “A powerful way off,” I murmured.

I listened to the sounds outside while Alison and Ian talked of London—the hooting of an owl in the church tower, and the shriek of some small creature in the wood. Sometimes I thought I heard muffled steps in the room itself, movements and clatters as if people walked there, but perhaps it was only the wind catching the heavy curtains over the doorways which led to the stone passages, or the mice racing up and down the wooden panels.

Above the fire on the broad, whitewashed chimney-piece hung a couple of shining guns, and Ian sat watching them, his fingers itching to hold one of them, to shoot in the fields and woods. In the chimney-corner, on the left of the fireplace, was a circular cupboard, let into the thickness of the wall. Its door was of iron, blackleaded and bright, and upon its surface was a polished brass plate and brass hinges. On the right was a narrow window which looked over the churchyard. At night a curtain was drawn over it, but in the dusk we could see the church and the stackyard, with four great haystacks and the church tower, all huddled together, as if they were talking in the dim light of the stars.

“Who lived here once on a time?” I asked Aunt Tissie, when there was a chance to speak. “Tell me more about the Babington family.” But again, before my aunt could reply, Ian interrupted.

“Can I go shooting, Uncle Barnabas?” he asked. I sighed. I knew he was going to ask that question, from the way he watched the guns, and I couldn't bear rabbits to be killed.

“Yes, my lad. There's plenty of rats hereabouts. You can get them but you must take care and not shoot your sisters. I'll give you a lesson, and you can buy your own cartridges from me, to teach you to be careful. Jess shall take you out shooting with him one day. Rabbits want keeping down, but you mustn't shoot the pheasants. That's not allowed. Leastways, don't do it for any one to see, but if you can get one for Sunday's dinner I shall not say nay.”

He gave a broad wink, and Aunt Tissie shook her head at him.

“Now, Brother Barnabas!” she cried.

Ian leapt with excitement, but Uncle Barnabas said: “Sit ye down, lad, and keep quiet. No need to hurry. Nobody touches my guns, nobody at all, neither your Aunt Cicely Anne, nor Jess, nor any one, without my consent and permission, and remember that!”

Alison was looking at the books in the little hanging bookshelf. They were all old and fusty leather-bound books of sermons and poems,
Paradise Lost
and Thomson's
Seasons
and
Pilgrim's Progress
. But it was no use to try to read, the room was so full of exciting things. I could not keep my eyes from wandering round to the copper skimmers and wooden bowls and the rows of horse-brasses with their suns and moons, and the handsome grandfather clock with its brass face and eagle on the top and the lustre jugs and china horsemen. Then Jess, the servant, came in and sat behind us in a corner which was his own reserved seat, like a stall in a theatre, I thought, for he could watch all that went on from his high stool. He took out a knife and started whittling something, and Ian went over to him.

“What are you doing, Jess?” he asked.

“Just making a little nobby whistle, Master Ian,” said he, and very soon he had made a whistle out of an elder stick, and we were all asking him to make another.

From the oven came the smell of hot roast potatoes, and Aunt Tissie opened the door and peeped inside and cracked their skins. She set the table, moving softly and quickly from cupboard to dairy, but everything was done so smoothly that before we knew, supper was ready. Then we sat round the white cloth in the lamplight and ate the big roast potatoes in the way Uncle Barny ate his. We broke them in two, sprinkled salt over them, put lumps of butter in them, and then poured cream into them, and ate them with a spoon. We even ate the crisp, brown skin. We had never tasted anything like this in London, we told Aunt Tissie, and she was pleased.

“They don't have cream and butter in London like ours, I'm sure certain. That Jersey cow of ours, little Lusty, she gives rich milk, and I always keep hers for the house. Ours are all fine cows, and every one is a good milker, and I love 'em, all of 'em.”

“It will be my turn to go down with the milk tomorrow,” I reminded Uncle Barnabas.

“Then you'd better be off to bed. The grandfather says it's your bedtime.” He glanced up at the tall clock in the corner.

We hunted in the candle cupboard for our favourite candlesticks, for already I had chosen a pewter one with a beaded edge, and Alison had a china one with green leaves bordering it. There was an iron candle-stick for Jess, very ancient, I was sure, and a collection of many kinds, so that each could be satisfied.

“You'll maybe like hot baths to-night,” said Aunt Tissie. “Ian will help me carry up the water.”

She filled the pails with hot water and we helped to carry them to the flat, oval hip-baths which stood in each room.

When we had finished, we sat in bed, and Aunt Tissie emptied them and carried the water away.

“That's enough for to-night. Go to sleep my dears and don't dream.” She kissed us, and tucked us up, and blew out the candles.

I lay in bed wide awake long after she had gone, breathing in the rapturous odours of sweet mossy water and lavender and whitewash, and as I lay there I thought I saw a shadow move across the room, slipping lightly with swaying, billowing skirts to the opposite wall.

“Alison,” I whispered. “Alison. Who lived here once, Alison?” but the quiet breathing from the curtained bed told me that Alison was fast asleep.

Then I too shut my eyes, and I never waked till the clattering of milk cans and the mooing of the cows under the window brought the lovely feeling of another day, with a ride to the station as a glorious beginning.

It was the following day that my adventure began, but first I must describe Thackers. It was a stone-built farm, with gables and doorways in unexpected places, with barns and cowhouses across the green grassplat and old ivy-covered buildings where fowls roosted and calves sheltered. Only a few yards away was Thackers church, with its twelfth-century tower which rose from the group of trees and haystacks so close to the farm buildings, the stables and barns, that it seemed to be part of the homestead. Round the high walls of the tower were sculptured shields, fifteen of them, with the arms of an old family emblazoned upon them, but so defaced by wind and weather that I could scarcely make out the devices from where I stood in the garden below. Pigeons flew about its slit windows and rested on the flat roof of the church; swallows nested in the eaves and there was a constant cawing of rooks from the encircling elms which dipped their boughs over Thackers farm. The stackyard adjoined the churchyard, the orchard was by the church, and fields went nearly to the doorway. We were warned to keep the wicket-gate shut lest calves should wander in the ancient building. My uncle had the keys of the church, for he was verger and caretaker, and Aunt Tissie dusted the pews ready for the parson who came once a month from a neighbouring parish.

Inside the house, beyond the kitchen, were the parlour and dining-room, stuffy rooms which Aunt Tissie kept neat and polished. She showed them to us with pride, but we had no desire to sit in the speckless splendour, among woolwork pictures of Abraham and Isaac, and silver cups commemorating Uncle Barnabas's success at the county shows. The kitchen was good enough for us, Ian told Aunt Tissie, and I could see she was pleased.

“That's well, my boy,” she nodded. “ 'Tis a good homely room as our family has lived in for generations.”

Just off the kitchen, down a stone passage was the dairy, where the cheese-press and the wooden churn for butter-making were kept. It was a great, cold room, with sanded benches all round the white walls, and yellow bowls set on them. Around every flagstone of the speckless floor was a little rim of yellow sandstone. I watched Mrs. Appleyard, the ploughman's wife, sand the benches and then outline them.

“Why do you do that, Mrs. Apple?” I asked her, and indeed she was like an apple, with her round hard cheeks.

“To make it purty, my dear. It's an old custom. We allays does it this way in our countryside.”

Next to the dairy were other rooms, a pantry and storeroom and larder, all built out of stone, and very cold and bare. I entered these rooms later, in strange circumstances.

On the landing at the top of the stairs was the chest where Aunt Tissie kept her sheets and towels, and I held the lid that morning, while she stooped to put away the clean linen from washday. A waft of herbs came to me which reminded me of our chest at home, and I told Aunt Tissie about it.

“It's tansy and woodruff that you smell,” said she. “We picks 'em in the pastures and puts 'em in the chests when they've been dried, to scare the moths away.” She showed me the little withered tansy flowers and the white ruffs of “new-mown-hay”. Then I lowered the lid and stood for a moment looking out of the landing window. It was the middle of the morning, the sun was shining brilliantly, the lambs were racing across the field in front of the gate and leaping over a fallen tree-trunk. I could see Ian in the croft, trying to catch Sally, holding out a sieve of corn and keeping the halter behind his back.

“There's your uncle going to the village,” said Aunt Tissie. “Get yourself tidy. You and Alison can go with him.”

She went downstairs, and I followed to brush my shoes across in the barn.

“Are you coming?” called Uncle Barnabas. “Make yourself nice for I want folk to see what pretty nieces I've got from London,” and his eyes twinkled with good humour.

He went to the coach-house, and Jess ran out to help Ian with the horse. Alison and I went upstairs together for our hats and coats. Alison put on her navy felt hat in front of the little oval mirror and for some reason which I cannot explain I stood behind her, craning to see myself. I seldom bothered to look in a glass, but this old mirror, half-shadowed with silver, made such odd reflections, such misted, dim pictures of the room, twisting them and reforming them in its curved glass that I was attracted to it as to a magnet. There were two tiny drawers in the inlaid stand filled with old bits of jewellery, silver buttons, jet and amber brooches, and broken earrings. It stood on the rosebud chintz of the dressing-table, and caught the light from the side window. So when Alison looked at her own charming face and adjusted her hat to the correct angle, I dodged behind her and tried to see myself, to find out if it was the girl I knew, the same Penelope, pale and shy. Even as I looked I knew there was a difference, and a stranger seemed to look back at me. I glanced at Alison's reflection and saw her brown eyes and her short curls with the blue hat perched askew, but behind her peered the eyes of another, who surely was not myself? Alison turned away and I followed, walking slowly, puzzled about the girl upstairs in the mirror. What did she want to tell me, or was it really myself? What did she know that was hidden from me? Who was I, anyway?